titan_uranus

I agree, it was a mark and HTB. It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving club than Geelong.

This is the right call. Jones might be disappointed but I’m sure he understands. He’s always been a club first person. He isn’t playing well and we have the opportunity to make the 22 better with Brown. Melksham starts this game IMO as our 22nd best player. If he doesn’t play well, Jones is one of a number of players not in the side who are pressing for his spot.

So a win tomorrow will put us a game clear of the Dogs and two games and significant percentage ahead of everyone else (we’re 150%, no one on 5-2 is better than 120%). Tomorrow is lose-lose in many respects but I hope we approach it with the knowledge that a good win helps press that gap over our rivals before our fixture gets nasty.

It's 100% about optics. The election is this weekend. I suspect the government will be concerned about having one rule for Tasmanians and another for an AFL side. If Tasmanians who were in Perth in the relevant period aren't allowed in, I expect North won't be either.

If Collingwood were able to play in front of a crowd yesterday after being in Perth during the red zone period, I can't see any reason for the game to be played in Melbourne without a crowd. If North returns negative tests all round, then we play here in front of a crowd if, but only if, Tasmania says they're not allowed in. If they're allowed in then we go to Tassie and the crowd situation depends on the Tasmanian government. There was no crowd at Optus Stadium because of the Perth lockdown, not because of North.

The issue isn't using kids as the sub, it's ensuring that if they don't get game time one week they do the next. We've been good with that all year, but the answer isn't necessarily to put them in the seniors. Chandler only comes in if he's going to do better than one of our forwards, and right now I don't think that's the case, so he goes to Casey.

As has been said: Kane Cornes' schtick is to say controversial things. It's why he gets paid. He does the Saturday evening video on the AFL website, the Sunday Footy Show, the radio Monday morning and Footy Classified Monday evening. Whatever he says on the Saturday or Sunday, gets discussed further on the Monday, and gives AFL.com/SEN/Channel 9 more stuff to tweet and talk about. At any rate, there's some merit to what he said, which came in the context of praise for us overall. We have made the finals once in the last 15 years and we're pointing to the scoreboard the first time we get to beat the competition's benchmark team. You don't have to agree with him but it's not like what he's saying has no merit. As to David King, I personally consider him to be the most overrated commentator going around. He talks so much utter rubbish. Just so, so much. So who cares what he says about us. He was stupid to go off about how good we were in 2018, so if he wants to keep suggesting we'll fail this year, fine.

Shuey, Ryan, Yeo, Hurn, Kennedy didn’t play and McGovern got injured mid-game. Some of them won’t be back for a while but I wouldn’t write them off just yet.

Why?

Alternatively, they’ve already had their four years up, 2017-20, for three flags and a prelim loss. Brisbane had four: 2001-04, for three flags and a GF loss. Hawthorn had four: 2012-15, for three flags and a GF loss.

Our post-bye fixture really is tough, too. After Essendon and GWS at the G, we have Port (away), Hawthorn, Gold Coast (away), the Dogs, West Coast (away), Adelaide and Geelong (in Geelong). That is a brutal stretch. Again, so important to bank these early season wins and so important to keep it up with this upcoming North-Sydney-Carlton-Adelaide stretch.

Meanwhile 10 of our last 16 games are against current bottom 10. One of those is West Coast in Perth, but the rest are two against Adelaide, return games against GWS and Hawthorn, and games against Gold Coast, Essendon, Carlton, Collingwood and North. Then there's Sydney at the G, and then five massive tests: the Dogs twice, Port in Adelaide, Brisbane in Alice Springs and Geelong in Geelong. Banking these first six wins is so important as it helps us buffer for losses in that group of tough games to come.

Gold Coast, Essendon and Carlton all play football, at times, that is good enough. Essendon's already had three of its six interstate trips, so they barely leave Victoria for the rest of the season. GWS is actually in form, pushing us, winning twice, then pushing the Dogs. Collingwood's best is good but they've got too many injuries. Hard to see them coming back from 1-5. Sydney are a question mark IMO. They don't defend well and are too reliant on kids who are already showing signs of fatigue. They do, however, have an incredibly good list of double-up games: GWS, Gold Coast, Essendon, St Kilda and Fremantle.

I agree with your overall point but not the bolded bit. We are kicking the ball better. We're kicking more to our players' advantage, we're kicking more direct, and we're kicking less up in the air rubbish. The stand rule maybe is helping with that. Some players are also contesting harder: Spargo and Hunt are the two who clearly stand out. So there is some individual improvement, but there probably is every year. As you say though, it's system-based improvement that is the real factor here.

Just because we have depth players at Casey doesn't mean we need to play them in the seniors. Players should only be rested if they genuinely require it, not so that we can give a game to Chandler or Bedford or vandenBerg or Lockhart. Otherwise the best 22 get picked every week.

St Kilda play unsustainable football. Last year and this, they rely too heavily on flaky players and goals out the back. Have topped up with B-graders from other clubs who looked OK last year but haven't been able to gel together. They are 17th for both points for and points against, and remarkably 18th for quarters won, having only won five quarters for the entire season (i.e. 5 out of 24).

Despite being 6-0 and 2nd on the ladder with a percentage of 150% and wins over three current top 8 sides, I still can't help but be concerned about this game. I should have faith, but we've played so poorly against North for so long, we play Bellerive Oval poorly (assuming the game is there), and there are always games in every season where a good side loses to a bad one. You mean like how many on here say Essendrug, Meth Coke and Carltank?

I'm a touch disappointed too. 78,000 today when both sides were in the bottom 4. 22,000 less last night when both sides were around top 4. Part of that will be the drop off from the rain: I'm confident people who were thinking of going, particularly those who had cashed in a $0 ticket (i.e. members) decided not to go when it rained precisely as they had to make their call. But only a touch disappointed. Today aside, most crowds this year have been below expectations. Whether it's the COVID effect or the AFL's woeful focus on "fan activation" with all the music etc. at games, we're not the only club struggling with attendances.

6,077.

I was really impressed with the umpiring in our Geelong game, where they must have called a record number of free kicks for throws against both sides. I had thought the AFL was onto it. Maybe not. The Dogs won a flag in 2016 throwing it out from tackles. Geelong's succeeded for years doing the same thing.

Staying humble is important. It's so fun right now when we're winning to say it's all justified, but remember that game vs St Kilda in 2017 when we mocked them and then didn't make the finals? So I'm not sure about Pickett pointing to the scoreboard. 6-0 is incredible but it's not a premiership. It's not even qualification for finals, let alone a finals win. However... The aggression on the field is to be commended (so long as it stays within the laws of the game). So I have no issue, at all, with Pickett roughing up Mansell. Richmond were playing dirty all night: Edwards bumped Oliver late and hit him in the throat. A Richmond supporter near me said "next time hit him harder and knock him out". Every time Gawn got back in the hole, whichever Richmond player was coming up essentially made Gawn their primary target and the ball secondary. Their persona is typified by Tom Lynch, who is a top 10 dog of the competition, if not the number one.

Yep. Even since 2018, we've added three years and ~50 games of experience. As we've gotten older and more experienced, we've hopefully finally started learning from our previous mistakes. Early season wins are vital IMO. They validated the hard pre-season work, and they inspire confidence to double down on what you're doing. If we were dropping early games would ANB, Spargo and Pickett still be pressuring at the high levels they are six weeks in?

The AFL's clash jumper policy is a disgraceful farce. We're required to wear our clash jumper in an apparent "clash" with Collingwood, but Essendon (bear in mind they are the away team today) is permitted to wear a predominantly black jumper against Collingwood's predominantly black jumper. It happens all the time: Carlton, Richmond and Essendon are permitted to wear their home jumpers against each other and Collingwood despite all of them clashing. The rules should be transparent and all 18 clubs should be required to follow them.

Don't agree at all with the sentiment that next week's a good time to "experiment". We're bringing Brown in if we think it's a sustainable line up whether it's the Dogs or North Melbourne as the opponent. We're not doing it just because it's North. IMO Brown makes us better and we have to aim to get better. Premierships aren't won in April. Sides are going to put even more time into us now than ever before. We've got a fiendish back half of the year fixture wise. We need to continue to put what we think is our best 22 on the park and try to improve where we can. If that means Brown, then we need to work out how to make the side work with him in it, because right now TMac, Jackson and Fritsch are locked into the 22. So if he comes in, it has to be for one of the players closer to the bottom of the 22: Melksham, Jones, Spargo and Jordon. Can we make it work? I think we can: whether it's Melksham or Jones, I think we can make the 22 work replacing them with Brown.

If you listen to the players, the biggest change has been their mental approach. They weren't selfish in previous years, but they also weren't selfless enough. We now don't rely on our A-graders to bust out an elite performance to drag us over the line. We now rely on structure and role playing. We've always wanted to play a forward half game. We can't do that with a weak backline. We've strengthened that (May, Lever and Tomlinson is infinitely stronger than OMac, Frost and J Smith). But our back half structure overall is strong enough, and we have such belief, that we can be aggressive in the forward half of the ground because we trust our defensive structure to be there for us.